This PC I Found At E-Waste Did Not Want To Cooperate

[@lucasrem]

Episode ? It's a production machine, remote admin on it, able to do even a hard remote reset. 1995 hardware... More Episodes needed ? Why ?

[@humidbeing]

I had one of those Starfighter cards back in the day. They used an AGP only chipset. So they put an AGP-to-PCI bridge chip to make them work with PCI. That's why the the video BIOS reports AGP as the bus. Internally it's actually using AGP even though it uses a PCI connector. Kind of a neat card.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Ah that's why! Thanks.

[@FoxMulder78]

Good? old Intel740.

[@osrr6422]

Rare card these days.

[@olexanderkidenko4423]

Serial ports are most probably not working because the motherboard and the cables have different pinouts. Yes, there were actually two different versions of serial ports wiring - common version have first half of the cable soldered to the top row of pins of DB9 connector, and the second half is soldered to the bottom row of pins. Less common version (alledgedly designed by Intel and used on their motherboards and Zida Tomato Boards among others) is wired in series, top-bottom-top-bottom-... etc. You probably have an incompatible wired cable-board situation going on, and the board itself is fine.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Interesting. I didn't know there was an alternate pinout.

[@Nephiaust]

What did the DOS fail on? For the HDD, it would more work on the old MFM drives than the newer IDE drives. It worked by shrinking the bearings to allow the platters to spin. If you want power the old drive (no IDE) and check if it initialises; it may be worthwhile to find out if that XMP card has something on the drive to tell us what it is for. That XMP card, it looks like a reset / watchdog; but I think the relays may also be used to swap which physical COM port was attached to what. E.G. Moving COM1 to be attached to Device#2 instead of Device#1 without needing a human to physically rewire it. That small card, is a SBC computer. Its designed to go into it's own 'motherboard' that supplies power and the ISA bus expansion. Its an industrial system; I think Necroware did a series on it. For the original MB, did you try booting with nothing plugged in (except power, not even the CPU)?

[@JenniferGweniverII]

props you going all out the A drive the B drive Dos mode I mostly mean if they work XD lol awesome !

[@lauratiso]

Xeta is a telecom Company based in Texas. I guess that board and this computer were used to control some telephone thing...

[@flintlock1]

Hi Thanks for the video, did you test the first board with an atx psu?

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

No since the PSU was working and power was getting through the board just fine.

[@Chozo4]

Had to freeze a few drives back in the days specifically for recovery as once the drive warmed back up enough it would once again slowdown and seize. Anyone who has dealt with the Toshiba GAS series of 2.5 drives would be well acquainted with the bearing grease issues in those drives causing premature failure in less than a year.

[@pigletshut]

The motherboard is a Tyan S1590S aka Trinity 100AT, a pretty full featured baby AT board for its time. I had one at a time.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. I remember using Tyan boards back then. They were always reliable for me.

[@jakethetech4958]

That last motherboard (with the odd ISA card) is in fact a Megatouch (maybe XL) CRT style touchscreen arcade tabletop. Used to be in bars everywhere.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Bingo! I didn't want to give it away just yet, but yeah. I have the software for it but I don't have the cabinet with the touchscreen display.

[@askjacob]

For a drive that you could hear the coils whine but the drive would not spin up - on power up we would knock them on the side of the drive and it often broke the 'stiction' they had - either the bearings going out or the heads stuck to the platter after a power fail that didn't let them autopark properly. It often worked, so you can get the data off them as quickly as possible and never trust the drive again

[@chaoticsystem2211]

looks like some watchdog thing :P or to prevent the meatbags fron "accidently" hitting the reset switch

[@joaoc_PT]

some old bios may get corrupted by a switched bit, try to reprogram it with an external programmer or hotswapping (saved one like that once)

[@catriona_drummond]

Ship of Theseus on the inside... I always fully disassemble and test everything beforehand. Learned from experience. My assumption is that somebody already tried their luck with this one - hence the new coincell and sent it to ewaste because they found out that the PSU had fried the chipset when shorting. Thats how it landed in ewaste.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. I bring back stuff all the time if I decide it is truly bad. I usually mark it as "dead" or "bad" to hopefully warn the next person.

[@cyberjack]

i haven't forgot the lethal shape edges , thanks for reminder lol

[@dereinzigeweg]

I found a baby-atx pc with a k6-2 500 a while back. cleaned it, started it, nothing. Meh. Turned out to be very light oxidation on the BIOS pins. After moving it around in its socket, the old baby beeped back to life and posted. Nice intro btw :)

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Thanks: I wish it was something like that in this case.

[@2009numan]

that case actually had 2 large bays and 2 small bays

[@RachaelSA]

I used to build PCs with these same cases back in the mid 90s. Around that time it was common to get boards that could take AT & ATX PSU's or 32pin & 72pin memory and some even had sockets for a 486 or P1 CPU. It was so you could buy something cheaper and have the ability to upgrade it later on.

[@2009numan]

why when running the PC was it showing 500 on the display on the front when it was a 200 megahertz cpu

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Because you need to set those type of displays manually with lots of jumpers. They are not automatic.

[@procrastinatingnerd]

21:35 That board looks like it is out of some kind of arcade machine.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yep

[@FJL4215]

Wow. When I was a kid we had a computer in that exact case, but without the XETA markings of course. I recognize the buttons and front panel but don't remember if it was the 25 MHz 486 we had, or if it was the Pentium 133 that replaced it. Greetings from Sweden!

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Greetings!

[@ShawnClarady]

I would take a look at the jumpers to see if the COMS/CMOS jumpers are set correctly. Check any other jumpers as well. It is an easy thing to overlook.

[@henriqueortizmendes]

Putting hard drives into freezer works only for Quantum Fireball hard disk drives.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

😁

[@EternalxFrost]

I recall doing that on Maxtor drives and some Seagate 10K too and worked like a charm

[@tobrz]

I have that identical case sitting in my retro lab with a p133 mmx

[@adamdavies163]

From experience, a coin cell reading at 3.0V is dead. A good one will read between 3.2 - 3.4V. Genuinely seen items that will not boot with 3.0V on the battery.

[@sebastian19745]

On many Socket 7 motherboards with the PS2 mouse header, I found that there are the holes under that header for a PS2 connector. Also, under the keyboard AT DIN connector there are holes for mounting a mini DIN connector for PS2 keyboard. I salvaged and bought individual mini DIN connectors and I replaced the mouse header and the AT keyboard DIN connector on all my Socket 7 motherboards. That because I have only one AT keyboard, only two AT to PS2 keyboard adapters and just two serial mouse and those I use with my 386/486 computers. Not sure about USB mouse that work with PS2 adapters or PS2 mouse that work with serial adapters. That way is easy for me to use a PS2 mouse and keyboard.

[@nathanmoak1515]

maybe that is why it was e-waste, because no one else wanted to try to get it going again. i used to own and repair and drive old cars because i couldn't afford a newer one. after many old junkers, i finally gave up and bought something i could just drive and was reliable. i haven't used a floppy in many many years.

[@antssaar863]

Its super soc 7 with agp made by Tyan. One way or other its worth tryng to repair. It might also have dead bios chip (did happen from time to time). Also test diffrent cpu and mem?

[@SqualidsargeStudios]

That video card isn’t getting desoldered, the solder is cracking

[@jasonkaiser1179]

I would tell my bad hard drives to either work or I would drill it and pour lemon juice inside. Most hard drives liked lemon juice better than working.

[@maxbanner4536]

The drive motor tended to get stuck on that series of hard drives, It was also part of the head parking system. Open the hard drive and gently flick the center (knobby screw bits)of the hard drive with a non magnetic spludger. The head parking system should unlock and the drive will spin up. Make sure you have a secondary working drive ready when you do this, to copy the data. When the drive spins down it will most likely rip the heads off trying to park itself, so turn off power saving on the hard drives if using windows. Check the jumper config on the HD and that the IDE cable is good. Make note of the bios Hd config and write it on the drive with a marker.

[@DelticEngine]

Never a good idea to open a drive, unless it's dead. Head 'stiction ' is easily fixed by a light mechanical shock in the right place. It'll then spin right up.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Agreed. Opening the drive should be a last resort. This one was spinning up fine though. In the past, I have had to open drives when the rubber bumpers on the head went soft and started sticking to the mechanism. Otherwise I try not to.

[@EternalxFrost]

That funny looking 16-bit ISA card looks like a SBC (Single Board Computer). If that is what I think, you need a backplane to run it, and essentially the backplane supplies the SBC in current (usually they have both AT and ATX power connectors) and adds a bunchload of ISA slots. I can see too that you have an ISA riser card along with it, which can come in handy. That is something you could look into for building your ultimate floppy tester. With a backplane you could ultimately use 2 ISA disk controllers to use a 3½ and a 5¼ drives on each of em.

[@kargandarr]

Ebay has a large number of retro cases for sale at any given time that are of the AT type.

[@radnybolt5327]

Wait can I just go to an e waste facility and buy old computers is that seriously a thing I could have been doing all along

[@silverfoenix]

If it did not post nor the keyboard is lighting it means either the RAM or CPU!

[@peterbedard5011]

Just wondering why you haven't just bought an external floppy drive?

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

I have several 3.5 external floppy drives. Doesn't help with 360k and 1.2m 5.25 inch disks though.

[@peterbedard5011]

Oh, I see. Just thought you were going after one format. Really hope you get it working. All the best!@@RetroHackShackAfterHours

[@infinitecanadian]

Can that motherboard be fixed?

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Ultimately, anything can be with the right skill. It could just be a bad processor or bad BIOS. Otherwise, I would have expected at least some post codes.

[@fredleckie5880]

Yup, I remember those cases

[@paulwarner5395]

Thanx for the video. Pity that the original harddisk didn't work. It may have had something other than Windows, Maybe Unix, QNX or OS2

[@LordWillyGee]

MS Win98 was really an early that used Office 95 or 98 which became a favorite for school & gaming OS, Pinball, Dooms, And early Warcraft, as well as an old game that I remember was World at War? Win XP and then Memory hog Windows 2000 which pushes the CPU to the limit.

[@rallyscoot]

AT MIDI tower have 3x 5,25 inch bays. And the other is just a big tower.. So Baby AT / AT MIDI / AT BIG TOWER.

[@danwat1234]

A BIOs 'post card' that's awesome

[@laserhawk64]

Give that hard drive a good slap with a tack hammer, I bet it's got stiction issues from age. While _very_ much a desperation move (and not for the faint of heart!) -- it _does_ work. Also, chances of a repeatable success are, erm, fairly low... as in, it's a safe assumption that this will work ONCE without wrecking the drive in some sort of permanent fashion... so best to do it with the drive hooked to a system where you can do a full copy of the entire drive's contents, either to an image or its own partition or whatever. Once it's spinning it'll stay spinning, but once it's turned off again... basically it's Russian roulette.

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. I tried that and letting it heat up for a few hours before the freezer trick. No go. Good tip though.

[@laserhawk64]

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours Can you tell if it's maybe a controller card failure? At that age almost anything's possible.

[@danwat1234]

Could buy a few USB floppy drives to test out your floppies?

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Yeah. That's the way I have been doing it for 3.5 up till now.

[@danwat1234]

@@RetroHackShackAfterHours the boring method! Kudos for retro machine attempt

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

I just picked up what I hope will be a better pc for this yesterday at ewaste.

[@2009numan]

cpu at 200 megahertz LOL not megabytes

[@RetroHackShackAfterHours]

Did I really say MB? LOL

[@miked4377]

nice job ..but problematic boards!

[@iamzubin]

Damn, pretty late review xD